Overview

The Mastermind Plot by Angie Frazier

A new, exciting Suzanna Snow adventure!

Suzanna "Zanna" Snow can hardly believe her luck: She's just arrived in Boston, the city she's wanted to visit for as long as she can remember. Think of all the mysteries waiting to be solved here! Her grandmother and cousin, Will, welcome her warmly, but her famous detective uncle, Bruce Snow, seems anything but pleased. He doesn't want Zanna meddling in his current case involving a string of mysterious warehouse fires along the harbor front. But Zanna can't help herself. Is someone setting the fires? Just when she thinks she's on to something, a strange man starts following her. Is he a threat? Zanna needs to solve the case before she has the chance to find out.

Product Details

About the Author

Angie Frazier is the author of the YA novels EVERLATING and THE ETERNAL SEA, as well as the middle grade novel THE MIDNIGHT TUNNEL. She lives in Southern New Hampshire with her husband and three daughters. Visit her online at www.angiefrazier.com

Editorial Reviews

After assisting her uncle, Detective Bruce Snow, solve a mystery at the Rosemount Hotel in The Midnight Tunnel (2011), aspiring sleuth Suzanna Snow visits her paternal grandmother in Boston, where she's immediately immersed in a perplexing case of arson and art theft. Arriving at her grandmother's elegant townhouse, Zanna discovers Uncle Bruce still sees her as the "pesky eleven-year-old girl who'd undermined his case at the Rosemount and had made a fool of him." To Uncle Bruce's dismay, Zanna becomes involved in the Horne fires case when Adele Horne, her classmate at Miss Lydia Doucette's Academy for Young Ladies, enlists her help to resolve a string of sinister warehouse fires. Adele's wealthy father owns the burned warehouses, where he stored valuable works of art. As she tackles the complex case, Zanna's pursued by a stranger who reveals himself as Matthew Leighton, her long-lost maternal grandfather, a master thief and Uncle Bruce's chief suspect. Conflicted over her grandfather's disturbing past, Zanna finds herself in a perilous position as she relies on her instincts to unravel the twisted case. Set among Boston's staid brownstones in 1904, the suspenseful plot unfolds from Zanna's first-person perspective, punctuated by her pithy observations. Fans of Suzanna Snow's first mystery will cheer her latest adventure. (Historical mystery. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews

Suzanna (Zanna) Snow is finally in Boston! Bostonthe home of her famous uncle, Detective Bruce Snowwhere she will stay with her grandmother and, with any luck, begin her own detective career. No matter that she is only ten; she has already solved at least one case, finding a missing child and returning that child to her parents only last summer. If only Uncle Bruce will agree to help her...but Uncle Bruce seems unwilling even to acknowledge her presence in Boston. And Grandmother, while very happy to have Zanna spend the summer with her, has enrolled her in a private schoolfor young ladies of qualityand expects her to do well in her studies and to make friends. Why should Zanna spend every day in school while cousin Will just hangs around? Well, Will is a boy, and the year is 1904. The reader will just have to accept that. But friends?! How is Zanna to make friends when all the other girls seem to know each other, and Adele Horne, the leader of the popular girls' group, will not speak to her and even seems to hate her. The stage is now set for a nice little mystery. Boston's museums and collections of fine art are under siege. Paintings and pieces of sculpture are being lifted from their places, and can simply not be found. Adele's father has a wonderful collection, including his favorite, a small figure of a dancerEdgar Degas' Ballerina, Age 14. When it goes missing, Uncle Bruce is assigned to the case. Suddenly Zanna and Adele have a common cause. Will they solve the mystery before Uncle Bruce does? Reviewer: Judy Silverman

Children's Literature - Judy Silverman

Gr 4�6—This sequel to The Midnight Tunnel (Scholastic, 2011) stands on its own as an appealing mystery with a plucky young sleuth. Suzanna Snow, 11, sets off for Boston to spend time with the grandmother she hardly knows. The city is quite different from her home in a seaside town in New Brunswick but Zanna finds it exciting. Her famous detective uncle, who resents her presence, is on the case of some missing artwork, and Zanna cannot help but investigate as well. Aided by her cousin Will and a testy new schoolmate named Adele, she is partly responsible for solving the mystery. Her prickly relationship with Adele leads to some comical situations as do her lack of skills in terms of how girls in 1904 are expected to behave. Fans of Nancy Springer's "Enola Holmes" series (Philomel) will be happy to add Zanna Snow to their list of quirky, bright, and determined female detectives.—B. Allison Gray, Goleta Public Library, CA